Steam Press

Superb, award winning speculative fiction - science fiction and fantasy at its best

What we do

Founded by entrepreneur Wellington publisher Stephen Minchin, Steam Press specialises in speculative fiction. Fantasy, horror, and science fiction; utopias, dystopias, and the coming apocalypse - these are our raison d’être. Established in 2011, Steam Press published three books in 2012 and all of these were shortlisted for Sir Julius Vogel Awards, with both The Prince of Soul and The Lighthouse and Mansfield with Monsters going on to win. Meanwhile, Stephen (the publisher at Steam Press) won an SJV for services to sci fi, fantasy, and horror. It was a pretty good night out. Three further books followed in 2013, two were released in 2014, and one book was released in 2015. 

Titles

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Scorchers is the first ever pan-Australasian anthology of cli-fi writings. Including pieces both by some of Australia and New Zealand’s most celebrated authors, its sixteen contributors have responded to a deceptively simple provocation: How can writers—and by implication literature—respond within the short fiction format to the overwhelming reality of the climate crisis? The resulting collection of climate-fiction spans rural towns and futuristic metropolises, space stations and back gardens, familiar laneways and underground cities. Its themes of love, loss, despair and tentative hope transcend its immediate settings and speak urgently to the burning issue of our times.

Paul Mountfort is an associate professor and Chair of the Auckland University of Technology’s Centre for Creative Writing. He is a founding member of Claxon.nz, a climate action group that brings together scientists and communicators.

Rosslyn Prosser is Head of Department, English and Creative Writing, and a member of the J.M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice at the University of Adelaide.

“The Doina Roman Trilogy, Threshold, works in many narrative compartments. It was said about her that it would be related to the new weird sub-genre, but also to SF or fantasy. It invites favourable comparison to JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings ...”- Felix Nicolau, literary critic

2015 RomCom - The Romanian SF&F National Convention.

2017 The European Science Fiction Society Chrysalis Award.

2017 The "Colin" Awards for professional writers, Best Book Award.

Book 1 of The Threshold Trilogy

In three volumes Doina Roman has done something that only a writer of undeniable talent can: create a fantastic universe, with its own logic, justification and coherence, populated with strange people and beings, who nevertheless behave, act and carry out dialogues in a natural, realistic, credible ways.

A fascinating, tragic, funny universe in which the Elders of Time change worlds, populate them with monsters, destroy civilizations, condemn peoples to extinction, take possession of the elixir of eternal youth ... in which, instead of money or property, collectors take debtors feelings, memories or years of life ... in which time can be stopped, people come back from the dead, and the thresholds between the worlds are not a hindrance for those determined to cross them.

A universe where even objects come to life, becoming memorable characters, created with an overflowing fantasy and a dose of humor.

In this first book travel through the first Threshold out of the City with Cat, a metamorphic, with the help of the Demented Elevator, a thing with a mind of its own which obeys its own twisted logic. Cat steals something without knowing its true value. He and his companions are hunted by Kay, a policeman with supernatural powers, who works for her powerful uncle Crius. The cast of characters quickly grows and soon all are involved in a desperate struggle with the very fate of the world at stake. The action is fast, the characters rich and humourous, the world unique and fascinating.

Can you live without feelings? How many of us could exist without the real values that differentiate us from other beings? What would people do if they were to give up kindness, joy, faith, sincerity, altruism, truth?

At once a funny, exciting adventure, This multi-award winning trilogy is also packed with sophisticated metaphors and layers for those that can see them; a story with universal appeal to young and old.

The untold stories of a New Zealand icon

Katherine Mansfield is one of New Zealand’s most famous and influential writers. While her work is well known, many will be surprised to learn that the ‘accepted’ versions of her stories are often pale reflections of the original manuscripts. For the first time that Mansfield’s vision of the supernatural has been published in full – a dream that she often spoke of in her correspondence with occultist Aleister Crowley and American author H. P. Lovecraft. Matt and Debbie Cowens have pieced together recently recovered fragments of her work, recreating Mansfield’s beloved tales as they were first written, complete with vampires, ghouls, and alien monsters. These versions will delight those in the literary community who always suspected that there was more to Mansfield’s work than we had been led to believe.

Winner of the 2013 Sir Julius Vogel Award for best collected work.

New Zealand Listener’s 100 Best Books of 2012

‘Awake but not awake, asleep but not asleep, the house breathing like a live thing. Memories  come  back  to  me,  like  regurgitated  parts of  my  life.  I’ve  heard  that’s what drowning’s like. Maybe that’s what I’m doing, drowning. I’m not sure why I’ve started  writing  the  memories  out,  giving  them  titles.  Could it  be  that  part  of  me  is trying  to  work out  what  happened,  how  it  came  to  be this  way?  Or  am I  hoping  that whoever reads them will bear witness to my life? It could be both. When I’m not drowning, I’m fifteen.’
 

The rambling ancestral house in the bush has always been home to fifteen year-old Simone. Amid holographic images of past events and in the company of a Great Grandmother who died before she was born, is where she feels safe. But something has happened, so much has changed. Her mother, sister, and best friend are no longer around and the house with its surrounding landscape has become her world. Dad comes by every now and then. He walks about the house and talks to her. But he can’t see her, can’t hear her. 

Now there are tenants: Annabel, Duncan, and Jae, who holes up in his room all day. It is through memories that come instead of sleep that Simone begins to piece together her life, tracking through the years as the past falls into place behind her. But as the memories close in on her fifteenth birthday she starts to worry. Frightened, she turns to the only ones she can, Annabel, who wants to help her, and Jae, who she’s grown to love. Then it comes, the fearful memory, the tragic accident that killed Simone and her best friend, and the real mystery of her existence is revealed.
 

What happens when we die. This has been the third question on mankind’s FAQ list since the dawn of time (numbers one and two being: Is this edible? and Excuse me, would you care to breed?). I know what happens. Believe me, I’d rather not. But I do. There is a lighthouse, and it guides our souls along the narrow path to being reborn as humans. It’s the light at the end of the tunnel. Unfortunately, as my undead granddad and the Tibetan special mission monk in my kitchen have kindly told me, there’s a problem with the lighthouse. And if the world is to be saved, someone needs to fix it. Which is where I come in: George Larson, eighteen years old. Who could possibly be better suited to save the world? Well, almost anyone. Especially as being a teenage guy is nothing at all about question three but all about questions one and two. And really, that’s complicated enough as it is.

Winner of the 2013 Sir Julius Vogel Award for best youth novel

Princess Juraletta has spent her entire life in Venera Castle but is about to be married to the crusty old Fissionable Duke.

Will her life ever be interesting? And, given his medical condition, will her husband survive their wedding night? Meanwhile, Rhameo is having more adventures than one young prince can handle. Whoring in the Gardens of Fleschimor, hunting tigers in the jungles of ancient Erath, being kidnapped by Amazons and sauced up for the evening meal. But his ambitious mother is arranging his marriage in the hopes of stabilising a galaxy riven by war. This does not bode well. Thankfully, the machinations of Lord Maledor, invading armies of Punkoids, Slutoids, and Sleazoids, space sirens, the amorous Octopus, and the mysterious Dark Magician should help bring the already simmering plot to the boil.

Shortlisted for the 2013 Sir Julius Vogel Award for best novel.

2025. Suicide is rampant, people are gasping in the streets, and planes fall from the sky.

Medicine and technology can reverse the course, but humanity can’t seem to rally. By chance, a young Kiwi chemist stumbles across evidence that suggests that gravity and the air, indeed consciousness itself, are responding to a dispiriting force. But who – or what – is directing this energy? And can the mystery be solved before humanity sinks into the abyss? 

Best novella in 2012 SpecFicNZ

A dream, and a thousand miles away is their only way home.

Some people can’t see certain things the world makes. It gets in them like a thorn and turns in a bad way. Cuts them up from inside, and gets a bleed going. And that makes a person weak. And in a world like this, kid, that’s enough to get you killed.”

Waking in a pipe in a silent forest, unable to remember how he got there or where he came from, Simon finds himself walking a rusting railway track with a mysterious stranger who cannot even remember his own name.

Abandoned factories and eerie mannequins dot their path, falling stars lighting the night sky and searing holes through the earth to reveal a maze of pipes beneath. A dream, and a thousand miles away is their only way home. But they are not alone on this factory world, and soon realise that they are fighting for their lives . . . 

Thistle is having a terrible week. Her mother has been incarcerated after throwing a pickled pumpkin through a window of the War Office, and now Thistle has been sent to stay with her aunt in Lily Gate. Mappo, Thistle’s familiar, seems distinctly unimpressed, and even making friends with a gargoyle called Mr Pepper and a scheming snark called Epona hasn’t managed to improve his temper. 

The Ghost Trials are looming, the war is still raging in the north, and Thistle still hasn’t managed to figure out how to charm crows. Things can probably only improve, but then again, Epona’s plans surely won’t end well. And what’s that we heard about a kraken?